Why study at LSE

Top Anthropology Department UK, Guardian 2018.

Anthropology explores what it is to be human and what it means to live in a human society

What is Anthropology?

Anthropology explores what it is to be human and what it means to live in a human society.

Why are some people rich and powerful while others are not? What gives religious beliefs such a strong hold on the human imagination? Can people from different cultural backgrounds be said to live in "different worlds"? What makes children turn out as they do? How are technologies transforming our relationships both to each other and to nature?

Anthropologists answer such questions in a specific way :

We carry out research on the entire range of human societies. To study anthropology is thus to study the world in one degree.

Our research starts from the ground up: we start by embedding ourselves NOW in the lives of ordinary people – be they stock market traders in London, fishermen in Madagascar, or Maoist rebels in rural India.

By taking ordinary people seriously and by adopting a truly global perspective, anthropology brings rich insights to the contemporary questions that concern us all.

Anthropology is a highly rewarding – even life changing – subject to study at university. At the LSE you will be pushed to question many of your core assumptions and exposed to radically different ways of thinking.

In our globalised world understanding the social and cultural foundations of human life has taken on a real urgency. Can people from different backgrounds learn to get along with each other? Is the "mixing of cultures" a new phenomenon, or something that has always happened? What are its implications? Will modernisation and development bring traditional modes of human existence to an end? If so, should we welcome or try to stop this?

Through exploring such questions, you will learn how to think critically as well as acquiring specific skills in the analysis of social and cultural phenomena. You will also learn vital communication skills: how to write clearly and persuasively, how to give engaging presentations, and how to argue your case.

You will also learn the craft of ethnography – the method that anthropologists have pioneered for collecting data about human societies and cultures. In our undergraduate degree students do their own ethnographic projects, developing research skills that can be used in a range of careers after graduation.

LSE Anthropologists are passionate about teaching and strive to maintain a warm and welcoming atmosphere in our department.

As part of this, we offer a full tutorial system. This means that you will work in small groups or on a one to one basis with tutors who will read your work and discuss your progress.

Alongside tutorials you will be taught in lectures and classes, all delivered by highly experienced anthropologists who are at the cutting edge of the field.

If you study with us you will also be joining a world famous department. Many of the most important figures in anthropology's history (Malinowski, Firth, Leach, Gell, Bloch, and many others) have worked and/or studied at the LSE. More important for our students, however, is that we have a glorious present.

If you study with us, you will get a solid, grounded and highly engaged training in anthropology; you will have fun; and you will leave with a degree from a highly prestigious department in one of the world's top universities.